Thought this was an interesting article, so I shared it with ya and wonder what you think.
By Steven Alderman (columnist with Esquire Magazine)
Man at His Best
The Attack on Marriage
Polygamy is to marriage what the free market is to the economy. Which can only mean one thing: If you oppose legalizing polygamy, well, you are a Communist.
Polygamy -- a topic you can't avoid these days (e.g., Warren Jeffs, Big Love, Mitt Romney) -- is easy to disparage. But frankly the antipolygamy arguments just don't seem convincing. Let's run through them:
Polygamists marry underage women. True, some do. But these are the fundamentalist megalomaniacs. Polygamy isn't any more inherently oppressive to women than monogamous male-female marriage. Should we abolish booze because Lindsay Lohan can't hold her Jack Daniel's?
If you legalize polygamy, it's a slippery slope, and next you'll have to legalize men marrying goats. Not really. Two adult women who are capable of saying yes or no do not equal one mute goat.
Polygamy is an affront to God and the Bible. Perhaps. But depends which part of the Bible. In the Old Testament, polygamy is accepted without judgment. David has eight wives. And Solomon holds the record with 700.
It's bad for the kids. The studies are vague. And actually, anthropologist Philip Kilbride says that polygamy would reduce the divorce rate and be better for kids.
There would be a single-man surplus. This is actually the most realistic and severe problem. The math is simple: The rich men will snap up several women. Sergey Brin will rack up Solomon-like numbers, leaving the rest of us schmucks with our peckers in our hands. (This will be true even if polygamy is a two-way street, as it should be. Women should be allowed to marry multiple men. But most won't. DNA and testosterone say that men will be the ones who do most of the spouse collecting.)
And yet...so what? Isn't that the point of the free market? Why should love be any different from business? It'd be good incentive for us other guys to start our own damn search engine.
If the government legally required that all men earn the same salary, that system would be described in a book called Das Kapital. And that's the marital system we're living under.
Polygamists of the world, throw off your chains.
http://www.esquire.com/features/man-at-his-best/polygamy1207
Full Version: Man at His Best
Same old stuff. We've gone round and round many times before. You apologists will gush on about how wholesome it is and how swell it is to have a built in baby sitter. I'll say Bull Han and off we go. Here's the counter arguments(s)
It is not possible to have any polygamous community without serious abuse of women and children. Moreover it is not possible to maintain any sizable polygamous community without using religious based guilt and fear to manipulate the women. It isn't possible to deal with the surplus young men fairly in any polygamous society unless it is very small and brings in women from outside. It isn't possible to have any significant polygamy without these things. It is that way in Moslem polygamous societies today. It was that way in ancient biblical times. And it is that way in MOST, if not all Mormon polygamous societies today, as it was in Joseph's and Brigham's day.
The only force that compels polygamy is males who seek money, sex, and power.
That's the way it is. If not for manipulating the goofy religion the FLDS, Kingstons, Harmistons, and all the other assholes would last for about five minutes. Amen.
But you are welcome to defend your view here.
It is not possible to have any polygamous community without serious abuse of women and children. Moreover it is not possible to maintain any sizable polygamous community without using religious based guilt and fear to manipulate the women. It isn't possible to deal with the surplus young men fairly in any polygamous society unless it is very small and brings in women from outside. It isn't possible to have any significant polygamy without these things. It is that way in Moslem polygamous societies today. It was that way in ancient biblical times. And it is that way in MOST, if not all Mormon polygamous societies today, as it was in Joseph's and Brigham's day.
The only force that compels polygamy is males who seek money, sex, and power.
That's the way it is. If not for manipulating the goofy religion the FLDS, Kingstons, Harmistons, and all the other assholes would last for about five minutes. Amen.
But you are welcome to defend your view here.
| QUOTE (PolygamousBob @ Dec 17 2007, 01:05 PM) |
| |
[QUOTE]Polygamy is to marriage what the free market is to the economy. Which can only mean one thing: If you oppose legalizing polygamy, well, you are a Communist.
Can you think of any socialist or communist who are--were a polygamist ? However if you think about it in C.C. and Hildale its been reported across the media the high rates of welfare and social programs these two towns are using compared to other Utah towns . Um , I think you have it backwards Bob.
Maybe I am a communist. God bless the gumment, I say, for landing hard on my polygamous ancestors. That I am free, educated, and sort of kind of happy, I owe some of that to the 19th century feds who made my polygamous ancestors' lives a living hell. Keep in mind too that the lives of a lot of the wives and the lives of a lot of the children of my polygamous ancestors already were living hells, but it was mostly out of sight. Dig a little deeper into our history beyond the glowing idealized stories of saints putting their shoulders to the wheel with a heart full of song and you will find a whole lot of misery.
Our OnTheStreet, I kind of see as the me I might have been had Mormonism continued on the path that Joseph Smith set in on. There's the twisted wreckage of a fine mind ruined by extreme toxic religious indoctrination and abuse at the hands of the FLDS. See it right on our forum here. Read it and weep.
Personal freedom vs. the public good is a difficult balancing act a lot of the time. The American ideal of freedom never was about complete unrestrained freedom. We're a scoial animal and we're governed by social contracts. As I read the American ideal, it's not about complete utter freedom but about access. We have access to the social contracts that govern us. We're not disconnected from social contracts but we have access to them. That was new. Prior to that the social contract was a done deal from birth and people had no say so on it. There's God at the head of table; there're God's buddies sitting by his side, you know, the King, the Prophet, the Quorum of the Twelve, and so on, and then further on down the table are your Stake Presidents, and then your Bishops, and then way way way way down there clear at the end is you. And you're nothing, a worm. Thank your God that you even get a place at the table at all.
You can see that thinking all over our OnTheStreet's posts, how individuals are nothing before God. That's the way it used to be for most of the people on earth and still is for a good many of them. We've grown beyond that. And now, some people want to take us backward to the good old religion. Well, you're free to want to do that, but to the extent you want that goal ensconsed into the laws of the land, I'm going to apply my freedom to fighting that goal tooth and nail.
Our OnTheStreet, I kind of see as the me I might have been had Mormonism continued on the path that Joseph Smith set in on. There's the twisted wreckage of a fine mind ruined by extreme toxic religious indoctrination and abuse at the hands of the FLDS. See it right on our forum here. Read it and weep.
Personal freedom vs. the public good is a difficult balancing act a lot of the time. The American ideal of freedom never was about complete unrestrained freedom. We're a scoial animal and we're governed by social contracts. As I read the American ideal, it's not about complete utter freedom but about access. We have access to the social contracts that govern us. We're not disconnected from social contracts but we have access to them. That was new. Prior to that the social contract was a done deal from birth and people had no say so on it. There's God at the head of table; there're God's buddies sitting by his side, you know, the King, the Prophet, the Quorum of the Twelve, and so on, and then further on down the table are your Stake Presidents, and then your Bishops, and then way way way way down there clear at the end is you. And you're nothing, a worm. Thank your God that you even get a place at the table at all.
You can see that thinking all over our OnTheStreet's posts, how individuals are nothing before God. That's the way it used to be for most of the people on earth and still is for a good many of them. We've grown beyond that. And now, some people want to take us backward to the good old religion. Well, you're free to want to do that, but to the extent you want that goal ensconsed into the laws of the land, I'm going to apply my freedom to fighting that goal tooth and nail.
On the one hand, it sounds like a sound concept. Success should be allowed to succeed. Our econonmy is based on successful people suceeding. Survival of the fittest. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Competition makes capitalism go around just as it makes evolution go around.
But.
There's also a societal downside to the winner takes all. Merit wins at first, but then again, merit takes hard work. If there's an easier way to get all the sex, money, and power without having to bother with all the hard work merit requires, there's a big incentive to go for that easier alternative instead. Which is what happens.
John D. Rockerfeller succeeds because he's a successful person. Wonderful. Congratulations. So he succeeds. Great. But then he, being smart, instantly spies a short cut. I can kill off the competition one at a time because I have a thing they don't have, size. I'll just lower my price for a vital comodity in a certain region where a particular rival is operating. I'll easily drive him out of his own market. I can afford to take losses in his market while underwriting the loss from profits at other markets. He can't underwrite his losses. He's a goner. Then, I simply focus in on another rival. Whamo. He's gone. One by one, I take out my rivals. Then, because I have so much wealth I couldn't even spend it if I spend every waking moment splurging to the max, I simply take over everything, including the government, which is easily bought. I defacto king now.
Whoa, said America. We didn't spill all that blood just in order to go from one king to another king. Son, we're cutting you down to size.
Put another way, competiiton is a legitimate value that needs to be maintained, but that value needs to be maintained alongside another legitimate value, cooperation.
We are a social animal. We depend for our existance on cooperation amongst ourselves.
The problem with a few highly successful individuals taking over everything and making themselves king is that this is inherently corosive to a copperative society. When there's one small group that gets all the goodies, and they've bypassed having to do the heavy lifting of doing this through merit, actually doing some good for society as a whole, the motivation for being a middle class wage slave is eroded. Thing is, without midlle class wage slaves, the whole house of cards collapses like a house of cards.
Or, one way to keep a society like that going is to keep people subdued with fear, fear of the enemy out there, fear of the enemy within, and fear of getting in trouble with The Man.
That's kind of what is happening right now in America. Fabulously rich people who've gotten there by being in a place of priviledge rather than by achiving anything has kind of gotten to be a social problem again, as it does from time to time. I'm not for a revolution here. That whole business of chopping off heads of the rich, man that is so counterproductive. And icky.
No, I merely think that society has to haul itsef back from time to time from the deck being excessively stacked in the favor of the ultra-rich.
Case in point. The FCC has just granted rules that endorse and encourage yet further concentration of mass media businesses into the hands of fewer and fewer players. We run the risk of a John D. Rockerfeller deciding what should and shouldn't be broadcast to us.
Polygamy is kind of the same deal. Naturally, a few highly successful males would like a lock on the lions' share of females. Who wouldn't? And there is a legitimate value there in successful males having mximum access to breeding. Again, though, once you've achieved that through a difficult course of hard work whacking the competition, why bother achieving that the hard way when there are short cuts? The people who've achieved power the hard way simply then design a power structure designed to kill the competition.
Which is exactly what our FLDS has become, a power structure devised for the specific purpose of getting rid of the competition the easy way, through simply holding all the cards of power within that community.
These gotten rid of competition, we also call them lost boys.
But.
There's also a societal downside to the winner takes all. Merit wins at first, but then again, merit takes hard work. If there's an easier way to get all the sex, money, and power without having to bother with all the hard work merit requires, there's a big incentive to go for that easier alternative instead. Which is what happens.
John D. Rockerfeller succeeds because he's a successful person. Wonderful. Congratulations. So he succeeds. Great. But then he, being smart, instantly spies a short cut. I can kill off the competition one at a time because I have a thing they don't have, size. I'll just lower my price for a vital comodity in a certain region where a particular rival is operating. I'll easily drive him out of his own market. I can afford to take losses in his market while underwriting the loss from profits at other markets. He can't underwrite his losses. He's a goner. Then, I simply focus in on another rival. Whamo. He's gone. One by one, I take out my rivals. Then, because I have so much wealth I couldn't even spend it if I spend every waking moment splurging to the max, I simply take over everything, including the government, which is easily bought. I defacto king now.
Whoa, said America. We didn't spill all that blood just in order to go from one king to another king. Son, we're cutting you down to size.
Put another way, competiiton is a legitimate value that needs to be maintained, but that value needs to be maintained alongside another legitimate value, cooperation.
We are a social animal. We depend for our existance on cooperation amongst ourselves.
The problem with a few highly successful individuals taking over everything and making themselves king is that this is inherently corosive to a copperative society. When there's one small group that gets all the goodies, and they've bypassed having to do the heavy lifting of doing this through merit, actually doing some good for society as a whole, the motivation for being a middle class wage slave is eroded. Thing is, without midlle class wage slaves, the whole house of cards collapses like a house of cards.
Or, one way to keep a society like that going is to keep people subdued with fear, fear of the enemy out there, fear of the enemy within, and fear of getting in trouble with The Man.
That's kind of what is happening right now in America. Fabulously rich people who've gotten there by being in a place of priviledge rather than by achiving anything has kind of gotten to be a social problem again, as it does from time to time. I'm not for a revolution here. That whole business of chopping off heads of the rich, man that is so counterproductive. And icky.
No, I merely think that society has to haul itsef back from time to time from the deck being excessively stacked in the favor of the ultra-rich.
Case in point. The FCC has just granted rules that endorse and encourage yet further concentration of mass media businesses into the hands of fewer and fewer players. We run the risk of a John D. Rockerfeller deciding what should and shouldn't be broadcast to us.
Polygamy is kind of the same deal. Naturally, a few highly successful males would like a lock on the lions' share of females. Who wouldn't? And there is a legitimate value there in successful males having mximum access to breeding. Again, though, once you've achieved that through a difficult course of hard work whacking the competition, why bother achieving that the hard way when there are short cuts? The people who've achieved power the hard way simply then design a power structure designed to kill the competition.
Which is exactly what our FLDS has become, a power structure devised for the specific purpose of getting rid of the competition the easy way, through simply holding all the cards of power within that community.
These gotten rid of competition, we also call them lost boys.
Street, I gave you your own forum because I was tired of you loading threads up with your stupid over-verbose gibberish. Anyone interested in you can see you over there in all your shining lunacy. You want to have your own forum plus take over the rest of it. I'm taking all this silly crap off. Go post your stuff over in your corner. Stop bothering the normal people.
The Chinese symbol for trouble looks like two women under one roof. Interesting how their language evolved with that symbol.
I knew you were going to say that, Furnace. The Amazing Chaster knows what you're going to say before you say it.
Well said.
Well said.